


learning humanity

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Season/Series 03, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-18 01:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11863776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: A single moment of contact, that was all it took to tie them to each other, for their souls to look at each other and saythat one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you follow me on tumblr, you might recognize the first two chapters from there. Starting with the third, everything is new to AO3.

There’s a warehouse on the edge of town. At least a dozen people have entered it since Zephyr One landed and they began monitoring for abnormal activity. Not a single individual has exited in all that time.

At first the running theory was that Radcliffe was working there, that these people were participants in whatever experiments Hive kidnapped him for. But Radcliffe is in a garage just off Main Street. May reported seeing him when she picked up Mack.

No one’s given any thought since then to the warehouse. Everyone is too busy with the Kree and the Daisy sighting and Mack’s impending need of medical care once the pod docks. Jemma’s long gone before it does.

She’ll be missed eventually she knows, but Coulson thinks she’s helping Fitz study the remains of the device used to summon the Kree and Fitz thinks she’s helping Lincoln tend to Mack. She has time enough to see if her fears are realized.

The warehouse is quiet, the night still, as though even the animals are afraid of what’s inside. Jemma pushes on, refusing to let their silence frighten her away. The door stands somewhat ajar and through it she can smell burning flesh and hear a faint but steady groan of pain. She rushes inside, only to stop dead almost immediately.

There are bodies everywhere. Flesh torn away, bones left charred by the speed at which Hive’s parasites devoured his victims. She forces her focus above them, to the only standing body in the room. He’s shirtless, his head thrown back, the taut muscles of his neck exposed like agony carved in marble. Even from this distance she can see great drops of sweat falling from his hair—and it’s no wonder when he’s holding a blowtorch to his ribs.

“Stop!” she cries, the word tearing from her.

One eye opens and she’s reminded of a long ago afternoon when her parents took her to view a distant cousin’s equestrian competition. She couldn’t have been more than eight or nine but she remembers distinctly the moment one of the horses broke free of its trainers, tearing through fences and displays, sending onlookers running in terror, all because some foolish child had frightened the poor creature with a rubber snake. Jemma’s never forgotten the wild eyed look the horse wore even when it was finally restrained.

Hive wears that look now.

She makes her way carefully across the concrete floor, through the maze of twisted bodies. She shouldn’t be doing this. Hive is a  _monster_ , the proof of that is all around her. And yet, her traitorous heart goes out to him.

“Stop hurting yourself,” she says, resting a firm hand on the arm holding the blowtorch. This close the heat of it falls across her face like water. She feels her hair going limp and sweat breaking out everywhere. “Please.”

He releases the gas with a beleaguered sigh and tosses the canister to join several worryingly bloody instruments beside one of the bodies.

“And what will you give me in exchange for such a boon, Jemma?” he asks. The sound is strange. The air whistles in his throat—or perhaps in his rib cage, as much of it is open and exposed. She can see his left lung straining back to life through the bones before muscle and skin cover it up. He sighs again as it does and gestures to the two dark and curling lines sitting just above his abs. “Would you free me from this?”

She touches her own mark—his name, written in a language she can’t read—without meaning to. She doesn’t need to ask to know that’s precisely what he’s trying to accomplish here. How many ways has he tried to carve her out of his flesh since the mark appeared? Would she have done the same if she had powers like his? Would she do the same anyway?

It won’t work. She knows if a limb bearing a mark is lost, the mark will always inevitably appear elsewhere on the body later. But goodness, she wishes she could at least  _try_.

So she doesn’t know why it hurts knowing he has been.

She wraps her arms around herself, protecting the mark. “Don’t you think I would if I could?”

The corner of his mouth draws up in a cold sort of smile. “Yes, I imagine you would.” He reaches for her, brushes her cheek the same way he did that night in Bucharest. She wonders if he thinks by touching her again, he can undo what he did then.

A single moment of contact, that was all it took to tie them to each other, for their souls to look at each other and say  _that one_. Or that’s how it’s always been presented to Jemma. Seeing who she’s saddled with, she rather doubts her soul said anything of the sort.

“Why?” she asks, then swallows when the word comes out rougher than she means. She dips her head away from his touch and he drops his hand to his side. “Why all this?” she amends, nodding to the bodies.

“You are persistent, Jemma. You prove impossible to dig out.” He says it almost fondly. “Like a weed or a cancer.”

“Or a parasite,” she murmurs, hugging herself more tightly.

“Or a parasite,” he allows.

Silence, more absolute than the one outside, settles over them. She studies the bodies instead of him, makes herself take in every murder he committed here today. Her soulmate did this. He killed fourteen people, all in an effort to carve her out of himself.

But her heart—her stupid, idiot heart that loved Ward and waited too long for Fitz—is aching just thinking of the pain  _he_  must have suffered.

She slides her palm over her mark, thinking she might be willing to turn a blowtorch on it too if she thought it would do any good.

Her phone rings, the usually cheery tone turned sharp like a knife in the quiet.

“You are missed,” Hive says.

She nods, barely seeing the urgent message from Fitz or the following one from Coulson.

“You should return.”

Yes, she should.

She looks to him. That wild eyed look is still there. He’s managed to hide it beneath layers of cold dignity, but she can see it. She drops her eyes, telling herself she’s only looking him over until her gaze settles firmly on her own name and she can’t deny that’s what she was looking for.

She’s spent her whole life waiting to see her name on another person’s skin, wondering who they would be, what about them would draw her soul to theirs, and what about her would do the same. Bile rises in her throat and tears sting at her eyes. He’s a monster, that can’t be denied, but is it really so bad being hers?

“You weaken me,” he says. She wonders distantly whether he can hear her thoughts. Is that part of his powers or the bond or both? He touches her again, soft skin brushing her cheek. “A god has no soulmate. He is whole unto himself.”

Her breath shudders out of her. She meets his eyes. “Maybe you’re not a god then.”

His hand falls away. He leaves her with the bodies and the silence.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Nice of SHIELD to send a few more test subjects for the doc,” James says after having led in the line of prisoners. His smile falls when he sees that Hive does not share in his good humor.

Daisy too is watching him and sees just where his attention has landed. She steps forward, ignoring how it makes Radcliffe’s creations nervous and approaching one agent in particular. “Simmons,” she says warmly, taking her hands. She looks over her shoulder to Hive. “If anyone can figure this out, Simmons can. She once cured an alien disease in like an hour.”

“Two,” Jemma croaks. Her focus, Hive notes, is fixed on him.

He tears his eyes away, looking to the body Radcliffe has spent the better part of two weeks fussing over. The Kree are a hearty people and though this one will never open his eyes again, his heart still beats, his lungs still breathe. His body clings to life it will never again enjoy, allowing Radcliffe the time he requires to take samples of his blood.

“And she worked on the GH-325,” Daisy says, a hint of desperation in her voice. “That  _was_  Kree blood. She can do this.”

Hive walks through the makeshift lab while she speaks, his hand out beside him that it might hover over the samples of blood and tissue, the counterfeit crystals Radcliffe has managed to grow, the Kree itself. He can feel the thrum of life clinging deep within. It is not easily snuffed out. “She will not,” he says. He turns. “Will you, Jemma?”

She shakes her head once. No, she is too proud, too determined. She did not break in the heart of hell, she will not break here, not even for him.

A sudden rage fills him as the mark on his chest burns. He stalks across the concrete floor. Daisy falls back from Jemma as he approaches, a lost expression on her face. 

“I have waited millennia in hopes of freeing humanity from its suffering. Daisy claims you can provide me the means to do so and yet you refuse.”

She lifts her chin. She practically drips with disdain, looking down on him like a queen.

Coming so near was a mistake. He cannot help but touch her. He does not think he is alone in feeling the pull of the bond between them; her face shutters in pain when his knuckles brush her cheek. “Not even if I ask it of you?” he asks. The others might think it is Will speaking in such a gentle tone, but he and Jemma know there is not an ounce of Will here. This is Hive and Hive alone.

She takes a breath so deep it shakes her narrow frame. She meets his eyes. “No.”

He does not know why he feels his hopes have been dashed when he knows very well there was no hope at all. “Separate them,” he says, facing Radcliffe, who has kept unusually silent up to now—likely he had hoped Jemma would agree and spare him his task. “Unless SHIELD sends us more, the good doctor will need-”

Fear. Not his own. It comes from the others and is followed by pain when one of the former Watchdogs pushes him aside. The pain is no more his than the fear, but he feels it more deeply as he watches one of his people, one of his new creations turned to ash and dust before his very eyes.

There is a scuffle happening. The prisoners are being restrained and threatened back into line. Three of his people are holding the one who threw the splinter bomb: one on each of his arms and a third with an arm around his neck. The man is swiftly turning blue. But once again Hive’s attention finds its way to Jemma. There is a gun at her feet and she clutches her hand to her chest while Daisy watches her sharply. The man who made an attempt on his life was not the only one who managed to secret a weapon along.

Hive looks again to the pile of dust that was an Inhuman only moments ago and hours before that was a mere human. Whatever else he feels, the rage wins out. He grabs hold of one of Radcliffe’s crystals. His people fall back as he approaches, releasing the suffocating man. He is strong enough to keep his feet. He will be stronger still in a moment.

There are cries of shock and protests, but he hears only Jemma’s “No!” echoing in the half-constructed building as he stabs the man.

“The good doctor,” he says again as stone encases the man, “will need to ration his test subjects.” More so now than before.

In a matter of moments the chrysalis shatters and the new Inhuman emerges, unrecognizable if not for his uniform. Hive lifts a hand to ease his pain and confusion and fear by turning it to peace. Then he turns on the spot to see the reactions—one reaction in particular.

The fear and disgust is palpable from the others, but he imagines Jemma to be more subdued, her feelings tempered by that which binds her to him.

He comes to stand before her once more and kicks her small pistol away into the dust. He lifts the crystal, caressing the air beside her cheek. “A single touch is all it would take. The compound would enter your system and you would be transformed.” He looks to her former teammate, drawing her eyes there as well.

The once defiant man has become a docile disciple, eager to serve in whatever capacity his transition leaves him capable. He is more than he was … but also less. There is no spark in the new Inhuman’s eyes. Hive fears that Radcliffe’s attempts at terrigenesis take away more of the human than they add of the Kree.

He imagines his Jemma as one of these. Her beauty replaced by conformity. Her brilliant mind dulled but filled with him. There is an attraction in that. At the least it would stop her fogging up his thoughts and tugging at his heartstrings, and making her a part of himself might repair the weakness she has created in him, but there is no guarantee. 

He touches the crystal to her shoulder, feels her flinch even while her thick jacket protects her. “Do not,” he warns. “Tempt. Me.”

He turns away from the accusation in her eyes, the haunting question that is written in every line of her face.

“Separate them,” he says again. He thinks, as his people scamper to do his bidding, that he will have to order Radcliffe to leave Jemma out of his experiments. Why, he doesn’t care to answer any more than he cares to answer Jemma’s question, though it dogs his steps long after he is out of her sight.

Would he truly do such a thing to the woman who, whether he likes it or not, holds the strings of his very soul?

 


	3. Chapter 3

It’s not a comparison Jemma is inclined to make casually, given her line of work, but she feels quite confident that this is torture. It’s been four days. Four days of ignoring Radcliffe’s notes laid in front of her. Four days of deafening herself to the pleas and screams of her fellow agents. And four days of her soulmate visiting her.

He brings her the notes she refuses to read and the meals she eats because she has to keep her strength up. She sees no one else. But it isn’t his _presence_ that’s torturous, it’s the distance. Even standing over her chair as he is now, so close his shadow falls across her, he refuses to truly, physically touch her.

It’s maddening.

“Haven’t you considered,” he asks, words like a lover’s in her ear, “that perhaps this is why?” His hand caresses the air beneath her breast. She can’t help but imagine what it would be like to have him touch her there, where her mark sits.

She lifts her chin, meeting his eyes proudly. “You think that destiny has matched us so that I’ll help you?” He’s talked a lot about destiny the last few days. He’s meant to save the world, he says. He thinks he’s a _god_.

“Perhaps,” he says. “But I had only meant our mutual desire to see this world at peace.”

She shakes her head. “It is _not_ the same thing.”

“Not yet. But how do you imagine world peace coming about? Do you truly think humanity will _choose_ to lay down its weapons of war? All SHIELD does is stitch up wounds while the patient dies of a cancer.”

“Peace through force?” she asks archly. He nods. “You sound like a dictator in a crummy dystopian novel. And I won’t help you. Ever,” she adds for good measure. It doesn’t matter how reasonable his voice or how she wants to lean into his warmth and let him bring _her_ peace. He’s a monster and she won’t help him make monsters of the whole world.

He sighs and moves away, allowing her space to breathe. “I had hoped you might be convinced, but luckily I am not as in need of your help as I was yesterday.”

Something cold and sharp twists in her gut. She doesn’t want to turn in her seat to watch him, but she can’t help herself either.

“Giyera has brought Radcliffe more test subjects.”

That thing in her gut grows claws that dig into her softest parts. His early attempts at winning her over to his side were reminders that it was her fellow SHIELD agents Radcliffe would be experimenting on. The argument didn’t work of course, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t leave her feeling just as guilty as he’d hoped. And now Giyera has brought him civilian prisoners as well.

She can’t save them, she reminds herself sternly. She _can’t_. She would only be dooming them and everyone else to a life of enslavement.

The reminder isn’t nearly as comforting as she would like.

He gestures to someone beyond the doorway and a moment later Giyera and several of Radcliffe’s surviving subjects are forcing Bobbi and Hunter inside.

“No,” Jemma breathes. The claws are in her heart now, squeezing so tightly she’s sure it will burst. They’re supposed to be safe. Gone from SHIELD and _safe_ from Hive. How are they _here_?

“I picked these two especially for you,” he says. “But if you would rather allow Radcliffe to carry on as he has…”

Radcliffe has no hope of success. Jemma refuses to read the notes Hive forces in front of her but that doesn’t stop her absorbing some of what she sees, and what she sees is that Radcliffe—if he even truly wants to perfect terrigenesis—is unlikely to do so.

“Don’t listen to him, Simmons,” Bobbi says.

“Yeah, whatever he wants, tell him he can f-” Hunter’s cuffed fists rise up swiftly, catching him beneath his chin.

“Stop!” Jemma cries. Hive lifts a hand to Giyera, stopping him from inflicting further harm. But only because he wants Hunter as a test subject. It’s not kindness, it’s an even worse cruelty.

Jemma stares at him, at this man fate has bound her to. “I hate you,” she says. She means it with every fiber of her being, of her _soul_. “But I’ll help you.”

Bobbi and Hunter object, naturally. Hive orders them taken away, but beyond that he says nothing. He doesn’t even gloat.

Jemma can only be grateful.

 

 

 

Jemma is working. Diligently. But it is not as satisfying as he had hoped, having her doing his will. He had to force her, break her resilience. And in the end she is only helping her friends, not him. Such a development can hardly be called a victory.

He leaves her to it, trusting Daisy to keep an eye on her—and her proximity to discourage Jemma from betraying him—and wanders the empty spaces of the unfinished mall, enjoying a return to the solitude he knew for so long. It isn’t complete as it was on Maveth—though he doubts he could stand it if it were—he has his connection to his people to tether him to reality, as well as the steady thrum of Jemma’s soul tied to his own. In the quiet he can feel her resentment, her fear, her determination.

Now _that_ he does not like. There is a bitter thread to her emotions which worries him. Perhaps he should remind her what is at stake if she uses her freedom to do him harm.

He barely makes it halfway across the cavernous space before he feels the pain and agitation of the others. A moment later he sees men in SHIELD armor rushing towards the makeshift lab and rage swells in him. Will he never be rid of them?

They will have to move. _Again_. Perhaps he should have kept Malick longer, used his resources to grind SHIELD to dust before dispensing justice.

Bullets slow his progress and he stops to see a line of snipers on a nearby balcony. Do they truly still hope to harm him? Do they not know what happened in Wyoming?

Or perhaps they do not. He has certainly not shared those events with his people, why should Jemma share them with hers?

All at once his world slips sideways and a hollow like a gaping maw opens within him. Daisy. She’s gone.

He looks to the lab while his hand lifts almost unconsciously to his chest. He cannot see Jemma. Has she escaped into SHIELD’s ranks already? Or was she with Daisy when she fell?

He rushes for the stairs, summoning his people to him to destroy these invaders. In this he is himself again, glorious: fighting alongside his people, tearing the flesh from men’s bones, and searching—always searching—for a familiar shape moving among the fighters. SHIELD will regret this attack, he swears it.

Sooner rather than later, he sees and smiles. They have brought their attack dog, the Inhuman who kills his own. Foolish of Coulson, to think this would work against him. Hive will grant him peace, turn his self-hatred into acceptance, and use him to destroy SHIELD once and for all.

He moves past James, easily dodging his fiery chain, and reaches out. Lash blasts his offer of mercy away so completely that Hive cannot even draw himself back together. That part of him which he meant to join with Lash is gone.

He knows now who killed Daisy.

He makes to attack again, this time hoping to knock his opponent off-balance before bringing him to heel, but Lash is faster, bringing up a fist dripping with power and plunging it into Hive’s heart.

Pain is a distant thing. It has been ever since he was made new. What one part of him feels cannot harm the whole. And yet, he feels strangely mortal with Lash’s power hollowing him out.

A scream sounds. It cannot possibly be louder than the gunshots or the storm in Hive’s ears, but he hears it clear as a church bell. He turns his head just far enough that he might see past the swirling flares of Lash’s power. Jemma is far from him, hand at her throat, fear in her eyes. He is strangely warmed by it, though every inch of him has gone cold.

There is a roar of fury from James, a flash of fire, and then nothing at all is holding Hive up. His legs are weak. There is no railing here. Jemma’s eyes are still on him. He holds her stare until darkness overwhelms him. He falls.

 

 

 

There’s not much of a celebration at the Playground. Three agents lost to what Radcliffe calls a permanent transformation. Five in the infirmary with injuries. Four Inhumans in quarantine, working through symptoms of extreme withdrawal.

“Hey,” Hunter says, hoisting a beer. “It worked.” His tone says _sometimes that’s all you can say_.

It was a plan, Jemma was told, his and Bobbi’s capture. They were given subcutaneous trackers and allowed themselves to be spotted by Hive’s men. It all seems rather reckless to Jemma.

She rolls the beer Fitz has handed her between her hands. A drink sounds very good right now. Too good. She has the feeling if she starts she might never stop.

She looks around the room, unsure where she fits in. She knows where she’s _meant_ to. Bobbi and Hunter are sharing an armchair. Mack and Elena are pretending to give each other space by sharing the couch. And Fitz is rather pointedly sitting one chair away from the others, leaving the closer one to her.

No one else is present. Coulson is in his office, presumably discussing with Talbot the coordinated strike which saw the mall blown to dust after the last of SHIELD’s personnel were clear. Lincoln is downstairs and will likely remain there whether Daisy wants him or not. And May is still on board one of the quinjets, mourning her soulmate’s death.

Jemma looks at her beer. She can’t stop seeing Hive’s face when Lash attacked him, how small he seemed, or the way his body dropped like a child’s forgotten toy. And she could swear she can still hear the whistle of the Air Force’s missiles shooting past, on their way to destroying any hope Hive might have had of finding a new body whole enough to take possession of.

She sets the bottle aside. Definitely not the day for it.

A dramatic tune sounds from the television set on the wall. The reporter behind the desk announces a live press conference from General Talbot regarding the assault on what appeared to have been an abandoned construction site on US soil. The feed cuts to Talbot lit by a setting sun, standing on the edges of a field of rubble so expansive it seems never to end. There is certainly no way anything could have survived in there, not even an immortal Inhuman.

Jemma turns for the door while the others are distracted and navigates the base’s halls on numb legs.

She’s only been gone four days; her quarters are just as she left them. She kicks off her shoes, falls onto her bed. Her hand slips under her shirt and for the first time she allows herself to consciously press her hand to the mark, her soulmate’s name carved into her skin. It doesn’t feel the way it’s supposed to. It only feels empty. Empty and cold.

She cries until sleep claims her.

 

 

 

A thousand miles away, reporters wipe their brows while the decorated general reports on Hydra’s destruction and hints at the potential that SHIELD might still exist in some form. The scene’s gone eerily still after the explosions earlier, not a bit of wind to spare them the heat, but at least that means no ruined shots from all the dust everywhere.

At their feet, the dust moves.

 


End file.
